


Several Minutes Too

by voleuse



Category: Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who, Veronica Mars - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-02
Updated: 2005-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>But they will be surprised</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Several Minutes Too

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers, but includes references from BSG 2.07. Title and summary adapted from Margaret Atwood's _The Explorers_.

It's a sunny afternoon, chemistry lab is cancelled, and Mac thinks she'll go out of her mind if she's stuck on campus for three more minutes.

It's almost coincidence that she runs into Veronica, though she had some vague idea of haunting the computer lab when she set out.

"Hey, Mac," Veronica greets her, clicking busily through Lexis-Nexis. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing." Mac eyes the data transfer at the bottom of the window, thinks she should talk to the sysadmin about streamlining bandwidth. "Just thought you might want to play hooky."

Veronica looks at her for a second, then shrugs. "Sure."

They're already out in the parking lot when Veronica pauses.

"Did you have a specific destination in mind? Or are we _On the Road_ing it?"

Mac considers the question. "Anywhere but here?" Off Veronica's raised eyebrow, she clarifies. "Population insignificant."

"I can do that." Veronica digs her car keys out of her purse. "I'll drive."

*

 

They end up pulling over on a slow stretch of the PCH. They sit on the hood of Veronica's car and watch the waves roll towards them, listen to them crash against the rocks below.

The crests of the waves look like horses, Mac thinks. She turns to Veronica. "Have you taken a class from Travis?"

"History professor, right?" Veronica shakes her head. "Nope."

Mac leans back on her elbows. "He's got a _huge_ fetish for local history. One of our first assignments was to find out why the town's called Neptune."

"Isn't it obvious?" Veronica gestures at the horizon.

"Yeah. I did a bunch of mythology resesarch." She crosses her arms behind her head, stares into the sky. "He was kind of a pissy bitch for a god, though."

Veronica laughs. "Sounds about right."

Mac lets the sun-bright sky blind her for a couple seconds, then shades her eyes to look at Veronica. "You think this town would have turned out different? If it was named something else?"

"Like what? Mars?" Veronica draws her knees up, smirks. "Athena?"

"Bit of a quitter, Athena, actually," a strange and British voice intrudes, and a strange face enters Mac's field of vision. "Or so legend has it."

Mac sits up, stares at the man. He's smiling. His ears are Will-Smith-esque.

Nothing about him pings on Mac's danger-radar, but she glances over to Veronica, just to be sure.

Veronica's looking at the guy with annoyance, but not much else. Mac relaxes, a little.

"Athena, a quitter?" she asks. "You're talking about the goddess of wisdom right? And war?"

He shrugs, looks out to the sea. "And so the gods stood, on that day of exodus, and watched the goddess Athena throw herself down." He clasps his hand together, as if he were praying. "And she fell, broken, unto the rocks of Kobol, as the thirteen tribes were scattered."

Veronica snorts. "Creepy. You get that from a bible or something?"

"Or something," he confirms. "Though she didn't so much throw herself down as get pushed over, screaming, but they don't mention that, do they?"

"And it gets creepier." Veronica folds her arms. "Huh."

Mac sits up. "Doesn't sound like anything I read about Athena."

He looks at her. "That's right. Your Athena just turned proud schoolgirls into spiders, didn't she?"

"What do you mean, _your_?" Mac asks. "It's just a story."

"Oh, right." He smiles. "Just a story."

"And exactly how are you an authority on creepy mythological suicide?" Veronica's got her hand in her knapsack, Mac notices.

"Sorry." He pats his pockets, reaches into his jacket, withdraws a slip of cardstock and holds it before them.

No, it's not cardstock. It's a faculty ID from CSUDH. Mac blinks.

"You're a professor?"

He nods. "That's right, a professor. Out for a stroll. Out to educate bright young women in classical studies." He nods again.

Mac looks at Veronica. Veronica shrugs, but takes her hand out of her bag.

"Anyway," he says, and leans against the cliff's railing, "Athena didn't actually die. Not right then. That's where your god Neptune--Poseidon, actually--comes into the picture."

"Weren't they rivals or something?" Mac crosses her legs under her. "Did he push her?"

The man shakes his head. "He loved her. And in his despair, he went out into the sea, and began his endless journey." He turns to face them again. "They call him the drowned god."

Mac stares at him. "You must be a real downer at parties."

"I'm quite fun, actually." He bobs his head from side to side. "When there's music, especially."

Mac chokes down a laugh. "What are you doing out here?"

He shrugs. "I felt like a little sea air. Didn't expect company."

"Yeah, well, neither did we." Veronica smiles, a little.

"Yes, sorry about that." He puts two fingers to his forehead, as if he were tipping an invisible hat. "I'll be off, then."

He strides away, and Mac shoots a questioning look to Veronica.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she stage-whispers, then looks across the pavement. "Was that telephone box always there?"

Mac turns her head, and as they watch, the box blinks, blinks, and disappears.

Mac rubs her eyes, but it stays gone. Rubs again anyway.

She looks at Veronica. Veronica looks at her.

"That never happened, right?"

"Until we find proof, no."

*

 

That night, Mac sits in front of her computer and tries to think of an appropriate search string.

She can't think of anything useful, and "disappearing telephone box" just pulls up a bunch of supply sites for magicians.

She wishes she had thought to capture an image with her camera phone. Then, maybe, she could have done an image-matching search. They do it on _CSI_, right?

She doesn't get much sleep.

*

 

The next morning, she hunts down Veronica again.

"You find anything?"

Veronica widens her eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on." Mac purses her lips.

"Fine." Veronica whips out a notepad. "The name on the ID he showed us doesn't pull up on the CSUDH faculty list, or any other university in the system. Or in the UC system."

"Anything else?"

"I tried calling a few of the faculty at Dominguez Hills, and none of them have met a man matching that description."

Mac mulls it over. "Should we care about it this much?"

"Probably not." Veronica tilts her head. "Do you want to stop looking?"

And Mac smiles, and Veronica smiles back.


End file.
